Elve Mobile for Android

Elve Mobile provides remote access to your Elve Home Automation and Control System.

Elve is an internet enabled control, automation, and media management software package providing automated and remote control for all your home automation and home theater devices from anywhere in the world.

Elve Mobile for Android provides a rich visual touch screen interface for controlling your Elve system and viewing system information. Control your lighting & electrical, media players, security system, home theater, infrared devices, multi-room audio, thermostats, irrigation and more. User's can use one of the touch screen interfaces provided with the system or can create their own, or use touch screen interfaces that have been created by other users.

Elve Mobile is a thin client application which uses the Remote Touch Screen Protocol to communicate with Elve Touch Service. The majority of the processing is done in the Elve Touch Service while the mobile device displays data sent from the server and sends user interactions such as screen touches to the server. Elve Touch Service processes the user interactions, monitors dynamic screen changes, and sends screen updates to the Elve Mobile application.

This program requires network access and may require use of a wireless data plan if a Wi-Fi network is not available. An unlimited wireless data plan is recommended or addition charges may be incurred by your wireless provider.

Installation

Starting Elve Mobile

Elve Mobile can be found in your Android application launcher. When you run Elve Mobile for the first time you will be required to enter a Server address, Username, and Password.

Touch the Sign In button to sign in to your Elve home automation system.

When you run Elve Mobile in the future, you will automatically be signed in as the user specified in the application settings. Pressing the menu button on the Android device will return you to the settings screen if you need to make any changes.

The initial touch screen interface for the specified user account will always load when starting up. This can be changed by editing the user account settings using Elve Management Studio.

Mobile Device Buttons

Your Android device is equipped with Home, Menu and Back hardware buttons.

HomePressing the Home button will return you to the Android home screen and Elve Mobile will continue running in the background.

MenuPressing the Menu button on your Android device will close the sign out of your Elve system and display the application settings.

BackFrom the connection status popup will return you to the application settings.

From the settings or touch screen interface screens will exit the application.

SearchThe search button has no effect in Elve Mobile.

Settings

The application settings must be entered before connecting to your Elve environment. These settings generally only need to be set once.

ServerThe host name or IP address of the machine running Elve Touch Service. If you will be connecting from the internet be sure to specify the name or ip address which is routed to an Elve Touch Service. Most modern consumer routers support a NAT Loopback feature which allows you to use the WAN address from both within the LAN and external connections such as 3G on an iPhone.

Example: 10.176.14.12 (this is an ip address)

Example: example.com (this is a host name or domain name)

PortThe port number that Elve Touch Service is listening on. The default port is 33907 and normally does not need to be changed.

UsernameThe username of the user account to sign in as. Each user account is set to use a specific user interface using the Elve Management Studio application. The user can belong to any user type, however access to each touch screen interface can be restricted by user type. Some touch screen controls can also have limited functionality based on user type. When using optimized mode, it may take longer to display some screens the first time, but subsequent views will be much quicker.

PasswordThe password for the specified user name.

Image QualityElve Mobile for Android supports the snapshot remote touch screen protocol, meaning the server sends screen changes as bitmap images. To improve the performance of transferring these images and reduce the memory used on the device the Image Quality setting may be set to a lower quality. The Highest setting will transfer the images in a loss-less format while the other quality options will transfer images using jpeg compression. (This feature requires Elve 2.0 or later.)

Keep Screen OnSet this to prevent the screen from turning off (sleeping) after a period of inactivity. Because keeping the screen continuously on has negative impact on a device’s battery life, this setting is only recommended when the device will be connected to power such as when it is being used as a dedication station.

Run in BackgroundThis setting indicates if Elve Mobile should stay connected when running in the background.

Firewall Settings

Please ensure any firewalls between the application and the specified Touch Service allow traffic on that port. The default port is 33907 TCP.

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